It's one thing to say you love your developers, it's another to give them 25,000 Lumia 800s to help them create applications for your platform. Microsoft and Nokia have announced that they will be giving away, for free, 25,000 Lumia 800s to dedicated developers, according to Mary Jo Foley.

While it may seem like a generous offer, Microsoft knows it has to foster its application environment for the platform to succeed and there is no better way to do that than to remove a large barrier to entry, the upfront cost.

But will it work? While it remains to be seen if shoving free devices out to dedicated developers will get the results Microsoft desires, it can't hurt to try. However, one problem still remains. Developers want end users to sell their applications too but end users want a full list of applications to choose from. While the Windows Phone Marketplace does have a high number of apps, that does not relate to quality applications; this can be said about any of the app stores, though.

As Microsoft bankrolls its product into the marketplace, it does provide the consumer with more options at their favorite retail locations. We all know that competition breeds innovation and Microsoft just dished out 25,000 reasons to use its platform.